Arizona testing new safeguards against wrong-way drivers

Daiana Paz of Chandler was driving west on eastbound Loop 202 near Mesa, but it wasn't until she reached the tunnel on Interstate 10 in Phoenix that she turned around.

The road was empty. The tunnel was closed for cleaning. The time was just before midnight. At 80 mph, she had driven 12 miles on the wrong side of the freeway.

Calls to 911 had poured in, but no patrol cars intercepted her. No message-board warnings were issued for other motorists.

Wrong-way drivers have become an increasing problem in Arizona and nationwide over the past few years.

In 2009, the latest year with available data, 1,772 people in the United States, including 23 in Arizona, died in crashes in which a driver entered a road against traffic or drove on the wrong side of the road, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That was the deadliest in five consecutive years studied by the traffic agency. Thousands more people were injured nationwide.

To combat the problem, the Arizona Department of Transportation is testing new technologies and road markers.

Safety engineers hope the right combination will keep some people from entering freeways the wrong way and alert other drivers and Highway Patrol officers if they do.

The agency expects to finalize a strategy by the end of the year.

ADOT has experimented with a system that detects cars like Paz's before they enter a freeway, has tested road reflectors and has lowered "wrong way" signs to eye level.

In Paz's case, which occurred July 31 last year, she turned around on the freeway and drove in the right direction. But as she reached 16th Street, she slammed into a rig used by crews cleaning the overpass signs. The 30-year-old died instantly.

A detection system may not have helped Paz, but it may have helped others.

The ultimate goal of the system, still years away, is to connect it to the state's traffic-control center, which can send automatic alerts to Highway Patrol units and to electronic highway signs for motorists.

"The Star Wars version is to connect it . . . and let drivers know by changeable message signs that there is a wrong-way driver headed toward them," ADOT safety engineer Michael Manthey said. "This detection system is cutting-edge. Right now, the state of the art is static sign."

Wrong-way crashes

In most wrong-way driving cases, the driver realizes the error quickly and disappears before patrol officers arrive.

When accidents occur, they can be catastrophic. Investigation photos show mangled vehicles. The crashes tend to be more severe, often involving multiple cars and higher impact forces. Half of all wrong-way collisions kill or cripple, according to the Texas Transportation Institute, a research center based at Texas A&M University's College Station campus.

Three-quarters of all wrong-way crashes are caused by drunken drivers, and half peak around 2 a.m., the NHTSA reports.

Wrong-way drivers have more traffic violations, felony convictions and other accidents than the average motorist, the agency reports. Two-thirds are men.

Wrong-way crashes are becoming more common, even as the overall fatal crash rate has fallen to a historic low.

"We see a lot of serious-injury and fatal wrecks as a result of DUI drivers driving the wrong way on the freeway," said Carrick Cook, an Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman.

Testing solutions

ADOT's recent focus on wrong-way drivers grew from efforts to combat the problem of drivers crossing the center line into oncoming traffic.

Over decades, the agency has added more divided highways, installed more cable and concrete median barriers and cut rumble strips between opposing traffic.

The agency launched experiments to tackle wrong-way driving in January.

Crews embedded radar-based detectorsat an off-ramp at the intersection of Interstate 17 and the Carefree Highway to spot wrong-way drivers. They used cameras to check how accurate the detectors were. The experiment was funded by a $25,000 federal grant.

Since the system went in, agency cameras have spotted 65 wrong-way drivers but had no crashes, said Randy Johnson, who runs law enforcement on the toll road.

"This equipment doesn't stop wrong-way drivers, but it lets us and everybody else know they are out there," he said.

ADOT is testing other preventive measures, as well. Last month, it installed raisedpavement markings on off-ramps at seven Valley intersections.

The markings, called "cat's eyes," are dark in the proper direction of traffic, but wrong-way drivers see a red reflection.

Avoiding a crash

Motorists alerted to a wrong-way driver often don't know how to react.

A few years ago, Cook was patrolling I-17 around midnight when the dispatcher reported a wrong-way driver near Black Canyon City.

Cook sped off to intercept.

"If I didn't know she was there, I probably would have hit her. I knew the potential existed, but it still surprised me. I can only imagine what a regular motorist would have thought," Cook recalled.

He said the only thing a driver can do is flash the high beams and wait to see which side of the road the oncoming car will go toward. That is often the outside lane.

Most wrong-way drivers are drunk and often think they are going with traffic, he said. They try to stick to the speed limit by driving in what they think is the slow lane when, in fact, they are in the oncoming fast lane.

Manthey envisions electronic message boards advising people to get over to the right if a wrong-way driver is headed their way. Houston's system does this.

Trial and error

Stopping wrong-way drivers, which cause about 3 percent of crashes, is difficult.

For one thing, the incidents often involve drunken drivers, who are often oblivious to warning signs.

California's transportation department, Caltrans, first started studying remedies in 1967. That has led to the proliferation of signs such as "Wrong way" and "Do not enter."

More recent research shows that lowering such signs closer to eye level and making them highly reflective helps. Arizona has done the former.

In California, Georgia, Washington and Texas, these and other approaches have had little effect preventing drunken, disoriented or elderly drivers getting on freeways the wrong way, a 2007 NHTSA report showed.

California tried one-spike barriers that puncture the tires only of cars traveling the wrong way, like ones in many parking lots. Caltrans researchers found that cars could still reach the freeway before the tires gave out.

Caltrans tried automatic gates across exit ramps, but they took too long to raise and lower.

Another favored system was putting red reflective tape on the backs of road signs, but they had limited effect on drunken drivers.